


there's something we're missing, darling

by Aramley



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The plane goes down in March, and it's June before Novak sees Rafa again. By this time he has been dead nearly three months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's something we're missing, darling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the AU_Bingo prompt _fantasy & supernatural: ghosts_. Originally posted [here](http://aramleys-words.livejournal.com/12427.html). Title fro _I Saw The Dead,/i >, by Villagers._

The plane goes down in March, and it's June before Novak sees Rafa again. By this time he has been dead nearly three months, but he looks no worse the wear for it, except that Novak can dimly see the pattern of the hotel wallpaper through his body, and his smile is sad.

Novak swallows around half-formed words. In his dreams, he's only managed futile remonstrations and artless, desperate pleading.

He's never had a prayer answered before.

Rafa lingers. He fades slowly, like heartbreak.

-

Novak was supposed to have been on the plane. They'd booked the tickets together and the seats were side by side, Novak in the aisle because he knew Rafa liked to look out the window (had he, he thinks later, had he looked out, and seen the smoke across the greedy earth that dragged them down?). He would have been on the plane if he hadn't misplaced his passport.

"You are hopeless," Rafa told him, laughing down the phone.

"Fuck you," Novak said, angrier at himself than at Rafa, but he still hung up. These stories aren't supposed to go like that. You're supposed to say, _I love you_ , for a reason you can't explain, and later be comforted by it.

Impossibly, they find the passport, tucked amongst the charred remains of a suitcase that belonged to Rafa. Novak thinks that God's sense of humour leaves much to be desired.

This is what haunts him: that the seat next to Rafa was empty when the plane fell; that he might have reached out for a hand to hold, and no-one was there.

-

At Wimbledon Novak makes the semis and no more, but he sticks around for the day after the final, when there is to be a memorial. People's Monday (for the man they are calling the People's Champion) is a gift of a day: piercingly blue skies and sunshine and languid summer heat. Centre Court is a cauldron of emotion. Novak sweats in his dark suit. He's glad that Roger is taking the brunt of the attention. He is the great rival, after all. Novak was only the secret lover.

They were going to play doubles together in Cincinnati. Rafa had promised.

When he gets back to the hotel room at last, dry eyed and his throat aching, Rafa is there. He's standing by the window, and the sunlight shines through him the way it might a glass vase.

"You would have hated it," Novak tells him, as he unknots his tie and unbuttons the collar of his shirt so that he can breathe. He laughs, thin and bitter, and tosses away the balled-up black lump of his tie roughly. Rafa would have hated it. He hated fuss.

Rafa watches him, mute and sad in the streaming sunlight, like an angel suffused with inhuman pity. Novak's grief rises in his throat. Rafa never feels so far away as when he's here.

-

An admin error on the Cincinnati draw leaves Novak and Rafa still in contention. After some profuse apologies, Raonic and Pospisil are given a bye into the next round, and Novak spends half his press conferences that week talking about Rafa. Yes, they'd been great friends. Yes, Novak had been looking forward to it. Sure, he thought they might have had a chance.

Yes, he misses Rafa.

-

When the tour swings to Asia, Rafa follows. Novak is fairly sure this is not how ghosts ought to work.

-

Last year in London people talked about Rafa as though his best days were behind him; this year he's the fallen hero. Like every young man who dies too soon, Rafa has become an eternal unanswerable _what if?_

Novak's still stuck on _if only_.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" he asks Djordje, once.

Djordje wrinkles his nose. "You mean like, what, Casper?"

"I don't know," Novak says. "What's Casper?"

"He's the friendly ghost," Djordje says, like, _duh_. "You know. There's a castle. He sticks around because he's got unfinished business. That's what ghosts do."

"Is it," Novak says.

Later, in the dark secret hours when Rafa is standing at the foot of his bed, Novak says, "Tell me what you want," but if Rafa has an answer, he won't share.

-

In January, Ana looks at the dark circles under Novak's eyes and says, "Have you thought about talking to someone?"

"I'm fine," Novak says. Behind Ana, Rafa stands silent and watchful.

-

On the plane to Indian Wells the seat next to Novak is empty, except for Rafa. It's been nearly twelve months, and now Novak isn't even surprised. He's just tired.

Rafa puts his hand on top of Novak's where it lies on the armrest. His touch is a chill felt down to the bone, and Novak thinks how cruel it is that such a creature of sun and summer as Rafa was should be so cold, now. If that is why Rafa is so sad.

"Go to sleep," Rafa says, the first thing he's said to Novak since he died. The first thing since, _you're hopeless_. His voice is soft, and sounds as though it's coming from a long way away. His smile is less sad. "I gonna be here when you wake up."

"I love you," Novak says. "I'm sorry I didn't say it before."

"Go to sleep," Rafa says, so softly. "I gonna be here when you wake up."

Novak resists as long as he can. It's a losing battle. The plane rocks gently around him, and Novak relents. Rafa will be there when he wakes up.


End file.
